


Human Maintenance

by Dien



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24546661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/pseuds/Dien
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38
Collections: Exchange of Interest 2020





	Human Maintenance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pf122](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pf122/gifts).



In his teenaged years, quite long ago now, he'd been known to salvage electronics equipment for repair, and then to trade or resell the items. Radios had been common, TVs, record players (and at least one electric fondue pot, olive green, its simple short fixed and the pot given to Mrs. Swale two doors down in exchange for a homemade cherry pie). His hometown of Lassiter had had a pawn shop, and what passed for a dump, and the men who staffed these places both came to know him-- to know he'd give them a few dollars for non-functional junk. Dead microwaves and cassette recorders... John Dorffstenner, who ran the dump, had suggested even that they go into business together, that you have a talent, kid, and you could make some real money doing this properly, what do you say?

His ambitions had been higher. He recalls that he had laughed in John Dorffstenner's face, which gives him a vague regret now, forty-something years later, because it had been unkind, and also, it hadn't done him any favors at the time, with Mr. Dorffstenner.

How different would have been the world, he thinks, if he had been someone content to repair electronics in a small Midwestern town for the duration of his life.

In general he loathes nostalgia, and there's only so much time he can spare for introspection, what with every day a crisis-- but all the same, as he drinks green tea and stares out the library's windows, he cannot help but spare thoughts for what might have been, had he been-- somebody else.

A simpler life, no doubt. He would never have met Nathan Ingram, but conversely Nathan Ingram might still be alive. He himself would be whole of body.

Whatever else, he would not now be here, where _here_ is an abandoned library, and _here_ is a military dog curled on his doggy bed watching him with alert brown eyes, and _here_ is the fact that the hand that holds his matcha tea has a thin straight scar across the palm, and _here_ is the sound of two ex-soldiers bickering as they approach:

“--completely under _control,_ thanks--”

“--actually, on fire--”

“Did I _ask you,_ or is this a situation where you've developed psychic powers to hear that I'm telepathically requesting your sanctimonious ass to give me a scolding?”

“In our operation, we do things a certain way, Shaw. Finch--”

“Tell me, is it the height? Is it that you're _so tall_ that it positions you as a psychic antenna for the silent cries of people needing for your guidance and experience?”

“--wants us to be--”

“Oh wait, is it your DICK, is your DICK the psychic antenna, Reese, is this a fucking _guy thing??”_

Finch rubbed at the bridge of his nose as the volume of their arguing grew closer; by the sound of it they were on the landing now. Bear gave him a look and a whine, so he sighed, and gestured, and Bear was on his feet in a second, dashing off to-- well, he supposed it could have been either of them.

On cue:

“Hey! There's my boy. Bear! Bear, hier!”

“ _Your_ boy? He's _my dog._ Bear. Bear, hier, Bear. Come to daddy. Good boy! Good boy, who would never light a--”

Louder yet, then they were here, the both of them. Finch turned to face them, leaned back against the wall next to the window.

“Oh my god you are so _full_ of shit, Reese. Finch--” (yes, here it came, time to mediate for the two trained killers-slash-five-year-olds, he thought wearily) “--Finch, will you tell _your_ dog to shut up about how I handle things unless he wants a nut punch?”

This last delivered as they entered the room, not-quite-jostling each other through the doorway; he had a sense that if he hadn't in fact been looking their way, they might have.

He took a sip of his tea to fortify himself.

Carefully: “It's true that... incendiary devices... perhaps should not be first-resort tools--”

Reese smirked. Shaw threw her hands up. “Fuck, I should've known you'd take _his_ side.”

“--however, I do have to say, Mr. Reese, that in your-- zeal-- to ensure that Miss Shaw is acclimating to our methodology, you are perhaps forgetting some incidents--”

Reese's smirk faded; Shaw went on point like a gleeful wolf. “Oh. Ohhh. _What_ incidents?”

Finch took another sip of tea before he answered. He regarded them: Shaw, short and smirking, thumbs hooked in her belt loops, dressed head to toe in black, with boots of the sort referred to commonly (specifically, by her) as 'shitkicker' (he found the term inelegant, but so evocative he'd been unable to avoid hearing it in his head whenever he happened to glance at her footwear). And Reese, who'd won the battle on the dog front it appeared, for Bear was bounced up with paws at his chest, soaking up the attentions of John's hands. John had a foot of height on Shaw, and was lanky where she was compact, quiet where she was loud, and considerably less given to bright sarcasm in Finch's experience--

\--and yet, for all that, they were more similar than not. He tapped his fingers against his mug as he indexed the similarities: their mutual comfort with-- and enjoyment of-- firearms both large and small. Their astonishing physical resilience, so foreign to him-- their ability to push through massive amounts of pain or injury, or sleep deprivation, or exhaustion, or lack of regular food. Their love _for_ food, in large quantities, of dubious quality, with the two of them both possessing a high spice tolerance. As Finch had discovered when coming in one day to discover the two of them competitively dousing the day's takeout in sauces that had made his eyes sting just from proximity.

(“This one's got ghost peppers,” Shaw had informed him while waggling a bottle at him. He had backed away, made sure to keep Bear well clear. Reese had offered him a strained smile despite watering eyes and a crimson, sweat-sheened face.)

Less frivolously: their histories had more in common than not. (He had researched so long, so hard on the both of them, hour on endless hour of cracking encrypted government records or making calls to elementary teachers retired from the profession for twenty years--)

Both had lost their fathers as children. Both had been driven to become helpers, to try to _fix_ the world through whatever blunt and inadequate tools the world said might suffice for the job. John had come to the gun first, Shaw only after a detour through medicine. Both of them had become soldiers: exemplary ones from all accounts. In fact, they'd been so good at all the brutalities of the job, that they'd been recruited to become something more than soldiers. (More, or worse, depending on your personal point of view-- Finch's was the latter.)

And yet they'd continue to serve, to function, doing all that was demanded of them like precision machines. Following orders. Regardless of the cost. A machine cannot make ethical judgments on its commands.

But they had, hadn't they? The both of them. This was half-speculation and half-deduction on Finch's part: it was true neither Reese nor Shaw had ever had a heart-to-heart with him as to _why_ their respective agencies had turned on each of them, in the end. He granted it might be his own wishful thinking, his need to believe that a conscience had persisted, despite everything, in both of his most dangerous employees. But perhaps that wasn't the case: perhaps they'd simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, perhaps their supervisors routinely committed such lethal 'turnover.' He didn't know. He had no desire to comprehend what dark logic held sway in the braintrusts of those acronymic agencies.

The point was that those agencies had failed their operatives. They had taken the endless loyalty and competence given by their soldiers, their machines, and decided it wasn't enough. And they'd tried to kill them.

Only due to their own respective resilience had Reese and Shaw survived. Discarded. All their terrible skills useless now. Consigned to the dumpsters of the world.

“Earth to Finch? Come in, geek squad?”

He shook himself. “I'm sorry. I was-- a million miles away.”

“Clearly. Stalling on narcing on Wonderboy here?” Shaw asked with false sweetness. He shot a glance to Reese, who looked grumpy but was consoling himself with finding Bear's ball.

“Really, Miss Shaw. I'll just point out that John hasn't always been the... the model of discretion, let's say.”

“If you're not going to spill details then this is useless,” Shaw groused.

“I've used many an avian alias so far,” Finch countered primly, “but I have yet to be a stool pigeon.”

Reese chuckled; Shaw rolled her eyes. “You've been saving that one. It's not as witty as you think it is.”

“ _I_ thought it was good,” said Reese, as he sent the ball rocketing down the hallway, to Bear's delight.

“Reese, Harold here could serve you a bowl of shitflakes and you'd swear they didn't stink.”

“As evocative, and horrible, as that is, Miss Shaw, may I derail the two of you from your 'trash talk' by pointing out that I didn't just call you two here for arguments? We have a new number.”

And with that the both of them sobered, like a switch thrown. The change settled on them like a uniform: professionalism, donned for the mission. The next half hour was lost to a mission briefing: they worked well together, whatever the clashes of personality and of having, Finch thought privately, far too much in common. They worked well. They asked him questions, and he answered them, this give-and-take that had become somehow normalcy, in an abnormal world.

Tell me who. What we do know about them. Job? Debts? Partners?

Where are they from, what is their history, how old, bank account, social media, address.

I'll handle the stakeout. You dig around their workplace. We'll need cameras, Finch.

His own fingers flew over the keys of his keyboard, seeking data to answer their questions and to arm them as well as he could. He wondered if Shaw, with her medical training, ever considered this stage to be akin to diagnostics on a patient: the assessment ultimately of just what was _wrong._ What needed fixing.

They had been machines in their previous work. He asked that they be human.

Reese listened with Bear's head on his knee, with one of his hands slowly stroking the dog's ears. Shaw listened from the floor, sitting cross-legged with the box of doughnuts in front of her that Finch had purchased as a concession to the sweet tooth all three of them shared. He relayed the details, but he ordered them to do nothing: they would save lives, he knew, not because he paid them to do so, but because it was in them to do so.

Because the world needed fixing, and one life at a time wasn't much, but it was something.

It was decided Reese would contact Detective Fusco, and Shaw would ask Detective Carter to run a background check, and Finch would keep working the backend when it came to their latest number's financials. Finch provided them with bugs and cameras, and Reese took on initial contact with the number, while Shaw would infiltrate the workplace. Like clockwork, Finch thought.

Oh, something would go wrong-- it always did, the human element, the chaos element-- but for this short space all the gears meshed, and drove one another, in harmony.

And when they had both left the library and it was quiet again, save for Bear's paws clicking on his way to his water bowl, Finch once again picked up his tea. There was work to do, but a _few_ minutes, at a window, well--

Outside, New York churned onward. The window had a decent view of the street beneath, always busy, cars and pedestrians and bike messengers alike. An artery of the city's biology, loaded with its lifeblood. Or a wire, if you preferred, carrying the electricity around the vast humming circuitboard that was the city.

The world needed fixing. In his hubris, he'd once thought he was the man to do it. A decade wiser, now, he could accept that no one person could ever accomplish such a task, not even with an AI.

But what might a hundred machines, or a thousand, do, working together? Human machines-- in all their flawed glory, their unpredictability, their compassion and courage? How many people might one find discarded in the world's rubbish, who could be functional again if given just a bit of repair?

He didn't regret it, he thought. Perhaps life would have been fulfilling, repairing radios in Lassiter, Iowa. Simpler, yes.

But even then he had always sought out the most complex machines. Simplicity was not a goal.

Finch bestirred himself and returned to his computers. There was work to do.

And if in the course of said work there was also time to order a fresh dozen doughnuts, and a variety pack of 'DA BOMB' sauces proclaiming their ability to blister tongues, and another bag of dog treats--

\--well, that was just system maintenance, for humans.


End file.
